SI Meta Analysis

Background

The need to substantiate policy and practice by evidence is a yet emerging theme in social innovation.
Although a growing body of examples of successful and less successful social innovations exists, these
are rather scattered and documented in different ways, while covering a multiplicity of divers aspects.

Objective

Drawing from this rich but scattered evidence, meta-analysis will be applied to systematically summarise
and integrate findings from existing social innovation case studies and analyse differences in the results,
thus adding value to existing knowledge while avoiding duplication of research efforts.

Methodology

Striving for a qualitative collection of SI cases representing a variety of different settings
in which social innovations emerge, develop and diffuse, a set of criteria will be applied for case selection.
The following figure exemplifies related criteria.

Basic Information

Latest News

August 22, 2015

SIMPACT publishes its «Comparative Report on Social Innovation across Europe», which summarises the findings
of 60 social innovation cases for which Business Case Studies and Social Innovation Biographies were conducted.

SIMPACT publishes the findings on meta-component, meta-objectives and meta-princripples across distinct welfare regimes
derived from the meta-analysis of 94 social innovation cases collected from existing databases.

Glossary

1

Meta-Analysis

A systematic analysis in which the researcher compiles numerous previously published studies (here: social
innovation cases) on a particular research question (e.g. economic principles, objectives and components)
and re-analyses the results to find the general trend or patterns for results across the studies.

2

Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA)

QCA provides a bridge between qualitative and quantitative research, integrating features of
«case-oriented» and «variable-oriented approaches». It conceptualises cases as
combinations of attributes and uses Boolean algebra to derive simplified expressions of combinations that
lead to a specific outcome.

3

Business Case Studies

A descriptive, exploratory or explanatory analysis of a case (e.g. business) to explore causation in order to
identify underlying principles, objectives and components.

4

Social Innovation Biographies (SIB's)

SIB's allow for the reconstruction of social innovation from its idea to scaling and diffusion identifying
involved actors, processes and networks as well as their interplay plus related economic principles, objectives
and components appyling narrative interviewing methods and triangulation.